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Interactions entre hommes et animaux

Apes, Great Apes, and Mankind in 19th and early 20th Century German Literature

Hoffmann, Hauff, Kafka
Singes, grands singes et humanité dans la littérature allemande du xixe et du xxe siècles. Hoffmann, Hauff, Kafka
Tanja Nusser
p. 217-236

Résumés

Depuis le Moyen Âge, les singes servent de miroir aux hommes. De nos jours encore, ils apparaissent dans la littérature et au cinéma comme des doubles troublants, des images déformées de l’être humain, pointant la perméabilité des frontières entre animalité et humanité. Ceci vaut particulièrement pour les grands singes. Cet article analyse la représentation des singes dans la littérature allemande du XIXe siècle et du début du XXe siècle. Il démontre que les textes littéraires postérieurs à Haeckel et Darwin utilisent des constellations et des questions semblables à celles qui apparaissent dans des textes antérieurs, notamment pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle. Ces textes présentent des rapports entre l’homme et le singe imaginés comme des actes d’imitation ou de « singerie » (Nachäffen). Après un commentaire sur Darwin et Haeckel, l’article examinera des textes de E.T.A. Hoffmann, de Wilhelm Hauff et de Franz Kafka – des auteurs qui ont utilisé le motif du singe pour explorer la question de l’acculturation, l’idée d’homme cultivé et le rôle de l’imitation dans l’acquisition de la culture.

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1Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, apes—or, to be more precise, great apes—have featured significantly in cultural reflections about personhood and humanity. More recently, there has been a notable rise in academic publications from various disciplines addressing the relationship between mankind and (great) apes. This article explores the relationship between human and ape through the lens of German literary texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries. E.T.A Hoffmann, Wilhelm Hauff and Franz Kafka each pick up the long-standing tradition of positioning apes as mirrors of humans that can reflect as well as question our perception of who or what constitutes a human. The three texts selected for this article reflect on concepts of humanity by employing the ascribed imitational capabilities of great apes. In portraying apes that learn to act as humans, the texts narrow the question of what constitutes a human down to enculturation or civilization. If humans distinguish themselves from apes through their use of language or abstract sign systems and their capability to produce cultural artifacts (the ascriptions vary through the centuries), and if these ‘skills’ are understood as civilizing activities, then all three texts claim that a degree of civilization can be acquired by imitation; an ability ascribed to humans as well as great apes.

  • 1 On the Origin of Species is Darwin’s groundbreaking work in regard to his evolutionary theory, but (...)
  • 2 Charles Darwin: “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Part One”. In: The Works of (...)
  • 3 Ibid., p. 161.
  • 4 Charles Darwin: “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Part Two”. In: The Works of (...)

2Darwin himself makes almost no mention of the relationship between man and ape in The Origin of the Species, even though this work is usually credited with much influence on the topic. The narrow public reception of his life-time’s work, limited to the question of kinship among the two species, has to be attributed to his other publication, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), in which he uses the term evolution for the first time, and links man to apes.1 The relationship between mankind and apes becomes his focal point, sharpening his ideas about evolution. Taking Ernst Haeckel’s research into account, Darwin was convinced that man “from a genealogical point of view”2 belongs to the Catarrhini, a subdivision of higher primates, stemming from the old world. He states “that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere”.3 “But," he argues in The Descent of Man, “there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians”.4 He further argues:

  • 5 Charles Darwin (footnote 4), p. 644.

The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Feugians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind—such were our ancestors. […] They possessed hardly any arts, and like animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs – as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.5

  • 6 Charles Darwin (footnote 2), p. 155.
  • 7 Ernst Haeckel: Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte. Gemeinverständliche wissen-schaftliche Vorträge übe (...)

3But it was not only Darwin who proposed that there is a close relationship between mankind and apes, or, to be more precise, “that man in all parts of his organization differs less from higher apes, than these do from the lower members of the same group”.6 The descent of human beings and apes, and their evolutionary relationship, was discussed widely in scientific circles. Three years earlier, in his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868), Ernst Haeckel detects an ‘apish descent’ of man—referring (as Darwin later does in The Descent of Man) to Thomas Huxley’s and Carl von Linné’s (Carl Linnaeus) ideas about the relationship between mankind and apes: Men and great apes have the same ancestor and are closely related by evolution. “Es kann sich daher nur noch um eine Frage handeln, ob man im System der Säugethiere den Menschen geradezu in die Ordnung der echten Affen einreihen, oder ob man ihn neben und über derselben als Vertreter einer besonderen sechsten Ordnung der Discoplacentalien [a group within the mammals, T.N.] betrachten soll”.7

  • 8 Ibid., p. 571.

4In their evolutionary proximity to humans, apes, on the one hand, challenge the dichotomies between animal and human being and between nature and culture. On the other hand, returning to Darwin, we can see clear distinctions when apes are portrayed as ‘relatives’ of humans, and humans in turn as part of the category of great apes—the Hominidae, or the older classification, the Anthropoidea.8 Darwin establishes an alternative genealogy: Even though we stem from ‘barbarians’, this is not acceptable because they are ‘savage’ (they kill and torture.) He proposes instead to position apes as desired imaginary genealogical relatives. In following Linnè’s, Huxley’s and Haeckel’s (among others) considerations that mankind evolved from great apes or Anthropoidae, Darwin not only assumes a graduated difference between great apes and humans, but he also attempts to disavow a relationship with so-called ‘primitives’ or ‘savages’. These two categories, apes and primitives or savages, are conceptualized as genealogical border-figures that demarcate who may be included in the category of mankind.

  • 9 The complete title is: Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, spe (...)
  • 10 Londa Schiebinger: “Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural H (...)
  • 11 Ilse Jahn: Grundzüge der Biologiegeschichte. Jena 1990, p. 249. Marita Metz-Becker: “Die ‚Mammalia (...)
  • 12 Londa Schiebinger (footnote 10), p. 143.
  • 13 Ibid.

5These shifting notions of evolutionary processes were made possible only on account of another, earlier conceptual shift. In the middle of the 18th century, Carl von Linné coined the concept of Mammalia in the first volume of the tenth edition (1758) of his Systema Naturae.9 Although the Linnéan organization of the natural world did not describe a phylogenetic evolution of beings, it introduced, with the Mammalia, a new paradigm, combining into one group such different species as humans, apes, lions, cats, dogs, whales, and so forth. In the earlier editions, Linné used the term Quadropedia (four-footer), but he “abandoned Aristotle’s canonical term”10 to include whales in his taxonomy.11 What is interesting about the term Mammalia, as Londa Schiebinger points out, is that “Linneaus made the breast—and specifically the fully developed female breast—the icon of the highest class of animals”12 to unite humans and animals in one category. Linné’s terminology broke with the “long-standing traditions that saw the male as the measure of all things,” and “assigned a new value to the female, especially women’s unique role in reproduction,”13 but I would like to focus here on the fact that Linné was also the first to name humans Homo sapiens, and who demanded

  • 14 Edward L. Greene: “Linnaeus as Evolutionist”. In: Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences(...)

of the whole world, that you show me a generic character—one that is according to generally accepted principles of classification—by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. I wish somebody would indicate one to me. But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so.14

  • 15 Donna Haraway: Primate Visions. Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. London / N (...)
  • 16 Londa Schiebinger (footnote 10), p. 144.
  • 17 For a critical reflection on Darwin’s scientific method see Sigrid Weigel: Gena-Logik. Generation, (...)
  • 18 Charles Darwin (footnote 2), p. 151.
  • 19 Ibid., p. 154.
  • 20 Charles Darwin (footnote 4), p. 632.
  • 21 Ernst Haeckel (footnote 7), p. 468.
  • 22 Ibid.
  • 23 Ibid.

6At first glance, it might seem as if Linné broke with a Christian based explanation of the order of the natural world, but various authors have argued that he established a taxonomy that “had a secular sacred function”15 in naming and ordering the external natural world. Grouping humans with animals and questioning the difference between man and ape, Linné simultaneously also separates humans from animals based on their brains or reasoning skills.16 Here, we can observe an implicit dynamic that haunts the debate about the relationship of (great) apes and humans. Although Linné argues that humans are different from apes, we are nevertheless part of the category of great apes, and all are part of the broader group of mammals. Both Haeckel and Darwin pick up Linné’s categorization to make their own arguments: Darwin classifies man as a mammal17 because man “passes through the same phases of embryological development”18 as the other mammals, and he agrees in The Descent of Man to the “justice” of Linné’s “conclusion” that man is placed “in the same Order with the Quadrumana, under the title of the primates,”19 and “that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor”.20 And Haeckel, three years earlier, uses similar arguments to defy Blumenbach’s theory of man being a “Bimana oder Zweihänder”21 in opposition to apes as “Vierhänder”.22 Haeckel places man in the same primate category as this of the “echten Affen, den Halbaffen und den Fledermäusen”.23

  • 24 Peter Sprengel: Darwin in der Poesie. Spuren der Evolutionslehre in der deutschsprachigen Literatur (...)
  • 25 Ibid., p. 117-134.

7The depictions of apes in German literature around the turn of the 20th century show that the new scientific concepts entered the world of literature only indirectly. While quite a few works picked up on the new ideas, as Peter Sprengel shows in Darwin in der Poesie,24 most references to Darwin’s theory or to Haeckel and also Virchow have to be understood as signs pointing to the reality outside of the text, functioning to locate the plot in a certain historical setting. These references do not necessarily explore the relationship between apes and humans in new terms. As the subtitle of Sprengel’s book announces correctly, we are looking for traces of evolutionary theory (Spuren der Evolutionslehre) in the literary texts. Neither Wilhelm Raabe’s Die Akten des Vogelsangs, nor Gerhart Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang, or Elias Cannetti’s Die Blendung deal with great apes beyond referencing Darwin’s evolutionary theory, and discussing in passing the concept of the missing link.25

  • 26 Wilhelm Raabe: Die Akten des Vogelsangs. In: Wilhelm Raabe: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 19. Freiburg in B (...)
  • 27 Ibid.

8On the one hand, the influence of Darwin’s evolutionary theory (and Haeckel’s and Virchow’s thoughts) on literature is obvious in, for example, Wilhelm Raabe’s Die Akten des Vogelsang. In a short passage, anthropologists call “Herr German Fell” “das gefundene Mittelglied”.26 Herr Fell exhibits himself as the “Mittelglied” in a “Théâtre-Variété”.27 In doing so, he calls to mind the Völkerschauen in Germany at that time. In describing himself as the found missing link, he assumes an evolutionary relationship between apes and humans based on a common ancestry and continuity between both species.

9On the other hand, we find older concepts well and alive in texts that use great apes as main protagonists: Here, apes are mirrors of humans. These texts are not so interested in ideas of similarity based on ancestry, and a hereditary continuity between apes and humans. Instead, they see great apes as a counterpart to humans, and their close resemblance to humans predestines them as mirror-figures. As mirror-figures, great apes not so much question the position of humans as the highest evolutionary beings as they question the enculturation of humankind.

  • 28 See Hans-Jürgen Gerigk: Der Mensch als Affe in der deutschen, französischen, russischen, englischen (...)
  • 29 This argument is indebted to an article by Wagner-Egelhaaf, see Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf: “Vom Nachä (...)
  • 30 Martin Opitz: Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey. Ed. by Cornelius Sommer. Stuttgart 1991, p. 17.

10In fact, literary texts shortly before and after Haeckel and Darwin that concentrated on great apes as main protagonists picked up constellations and questions comparable to those addressed in earlier texts,28 especially literary texts from the first half of the 19th century: Although we can detect shifts in the depiction of the human-ape relationship in these texts, we face a human-ape relationship that is imagined in terms of imitating or ‘aping’ (nachäffen.) The derogative term ‘aping’ was, for example, introduced as early as the 17th century when Martin Opitz wrote in his Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey (1624),29 “vnd soll man auch wissen/das die gantze Poeterey im nachaeffen der Natur bestehe”.30

  • 31 See Olaf Breidbach: Ernst Haeckel. Bildwelten der Natur. München / Berlin / London /New York 2006.

11I argue that Darwin’s publications on the theory of evolution and the idea of man being part of the category of the great apes do not mark the kind of paradigm shift in German literary texts depicting great apes as main protagonists as one might expect. This is astonishing because Darwin as well as Haeckel popularized these ideas widely.31 More importantly, the specific tropes of imitation or ‘aping’ already emerged in literature long before the early 19th century, and thus well before any scientific explorations of the human-ape-relationship became popular. In short, we are seeing a shift in the depiction of the human-ape relationship in texts that mention evolutionary theories, while older concepts are still employed when great apes act as mirrors, reflecting or questioning who or what is human. Even if only a few German texts between the early 19th and early 20th century portray great apes as main protagonists these texts are noteworthy because they clearly take up older discourses to discuss current questions of education, cultivation and civilization.

  • 32 Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture. New York 1994.
  • 33 Ibid., p. 86.
  • 34 Ibid.
  • 35 Virginia Richter: “‘Blurred copies of himself.’ Der Affe als Grenzfigur zwischen Mensch und Tier in (...)

12While Franz Kafka’s Rotpeter and his ability to imitate human behavior have been discussed broadly, far less attention has been paid to earlier texts on the topic, especially literary texts from the early 19th century. I will now discuss the way these texts deal with the idea of cultivation (via imitation), and their usage of the derogative term “aping”. In general terms, imitation is here seen as part of a process in which someone or something adopts a culture. It stands to reason that the concept of mimicry, as Homi K. Bhabha presents it in The Location of Culture32 from a postcolonial perspective, grasps this process more accurately than the concept of imitation. Bhabha defines mimicry as a “desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”.33 This camouflage, as Bhabha calls it referring to Jacques Lacan, is “stricken by an indeterminacy: mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal”.34 Certainly, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and Franz Kafka’s Bericht für eine Akademie (1914) have to be read as (colonial) mimicry,35 as both enact imitation as an excess which—as Virginia Richter argues with respect to Poe’s text—simultaneously disavows and affirms the differences of the other as Other. However, in Hoffmann and Hauff, texts of the early to mid-19th century, we encounter imitation as a basic tool for acquiring knowledge about mankind itself rather than about the “recognizable Other”. In other words, while Poe’s text definitely presents a colonial mimicry, and while Kafka’s text in part negotiates a colonial mimicry, Hoffmann’s and Hauff’s texts do not focus explicitly on questions of race within a species. They focus on mankind itself by employing the differences inside that category. Whereas mimicry is a camouflage that harbors a subversive moment, the texts here portray cultivation as a dressage which not so much anchors the subversive moment in the imitating figure of the ape, but instead in the reader.

  • 36 Roland Borgards: “Affen. Von Aristoteles bis Soemmerring”. In: Günter Oesterle /Roland Borgards / C (...)
  • 37 Albertus Magnus: De Animalibus Libri XXVI. Nach der Cölner Urschift. Ed. by Hermann Stadler. 2 vols (...)
  • 38 Ibid., p. 1324-1329. Udo Friedrich: Menschentier und Tiermensch. Diskurse der Grenzziehung und Gren (...)
  • 39 Roland Borgards (footnote 36), p. 242.
  • 40 For the ambivalent function of the ape as a border-figure see Virginia Richter (footnote 35), p. 60 (...)

13One finds in texts published before Darwin’s evolutionary treatise and the ensuing debate about the relationship between mankind and apes that the depiction of apes and great apes since antiquity is often bound to anthropological and anthropocentric categories. In antiquity, apes were perceived as hybrid beings not completely separated from humans; they were, as Roland Borgards writes, perceived as a mixture of man and animal, of zoology and mythology. This was something noteworthy, but it did not pose an epistemological problem.36 That changed in the middle of the 13th century with Albertus Magnus who argued in his De animalibus37 for a new differentiation between animal and human, namely one that takes into account the inner and outer senses: Only humans possess imaginatio and memoria as differentia specifica from all other beings. With this reorganization of the fauna, a threefold division emerges: humans, manlike animals (apes), and animals dissimilar to humans. Within the first group, another differentiation can be observed, one that marks a certain group of humans as not human: Apes are non-human, they are manlike animals, while pygmies are perfect animals, but, as the most perfect animal of all animals, one step below humans. For Albertus Magnus, it follows that pygmies are not human; they are manlike animals.38 We see here the beginnings of a discourse on race in which apes can figure as depictions of non-white humans, and at the same time, we see the presentation of the ape as well as the pygmy as boarder-dwellers39: They are and are not the other. As they do not have the faculties for imagination, memory, and rationality, as Magnus argues, it follows implicitly that they can only imitate humans. This argumentative structure, placing a species on the border between animals and humans, will persist for centuries to come, even though the species that inhabits this realm will keep changing.40

  • 41 Roland Borgards (footnote 36), p. 247.

14Until the late 17th century, only very few Europeans ever saw what we today call a great ape. Most people depended on literary depictions in travelogues for an impression of a great ape. Then, in the 17th century, a new species was found: the orangutan. Although some difficulties arose over the following years as to which apes exactly should be included in this term, the orangutan proceeded to be firmly positioned between animals and humans.41 And to this day, we find that great apes act as unsettling doubles and distorted images of the human in literature and film, marking the porous border between the animalistic and the human.

  • 42 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men. Ed. by (...)
  • 43 Johann Gottfried Schnabel: Insel Felsenburg. Mit Ludwig Tiecks Vorrede zur Ausgabe von 1828. Ed by (...)
  • 44 Ibid., p. 523. Roland Borgards: “Hund, Affe, Mensch. Theriotopien bei David Lynch, Paulus Potter un (...)
  • 45 Cornelius Pauw: Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Amerikaner, oder wichtige Beyträge zur Gesch (...)
  • 46 Ibid., p. 37f.

15In the middle of the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau stepped into the debate about how to classify great apes (in his case the orangutan) within a taxonomy of living beings. In a lengthy annotation to his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,42 he unfurls three ideas about how to define an orangutan. The first one postulates that the orangutan is simply an animal. The second one proposes it is a ‘monster’; a ‘miscegenation’ between a (female) human and a (male) ape; an idea Gustave Flaubert took up in his early work Quidquid Voleris, published in 1837. To name just two other literary works from 18th century Germany that dealt with the idea of species interbreeding: In Johann Gottfried Schnabel’s Wunderliche Fata einiger Seefahrer, absonderlich Alberti Julii, eines geborenes Sachsens (better known as Insel Felsenburg; first published 1731),43 a dead Spaniard’s journal tells of three Spanish men who had “Äffinen an sich gewöhnt, mit welchen sie sehr öfters, so wohl bey Tage als Nacht eine solche schändliche Wollust zu treiben pflegten”.44 This fantasy about interbreeding species can be linked directly to a race discourse, as Cornelius Pauw’s Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Amerikaner, oder wichtige Beyträge zur Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts from 176945 shows. In this work, interbreeding is imagined as a sexual act between a “Pongo, und einer geilen, aber mit Gewalt geschwängerten Negerinn”46 which results in an albino.

  • 47 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (footnote 42), p. 324-349. For the term ‘experiment’ in this context see Rola (...)

16Rousseau imagines thirdly the orangutan to be a “homme sauvages,” a savage (hu)man. This categorization distinguishes between apes and ‘pongos,’ or what we today call great apes. While apes are not capable of improving themselves—this is the criterion for deciding if an animal is human or not—experiments would have to show whether orangutans or pongos are or are not human.47 Rousseau argues that the most reliable experiment establishing the status of the orangutan as human or not human beyond all doubt consists of crossbreeding the orangutan with a human: If that experiment turned out to be a success, then the orangutan would without any doubt qualify as a human being.

  • 48 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (footnote 42), p. 115.
  • 49 Ibid.

17Rousseau’s argument contains a reflection on the encounter with the ‘other’: “Although the inhabitants of Europe have for the past three or four hundred years overrun the other parts of the world and are constantly publishing new collections of travel and reports, I am convinced that the only men we know are the Europeans”.48 The Europeans merely studied the people of their own country: These “people who have described so many things have said only what everybody already knew, that all they were able to perceive at the other end of the world is what they could perfectly well have observed without leaving their street, and that the telling traits that differentiate Nations and strike eyes made to see have almost always escaped theirs”.49 Using taxonomy to determine the nature of the orangutan (as human or animal), Rousseau suggests that there is a missed encounter with the racial other because our perception is always already structured by categories that incorporate the foreign or the other as part of our own signifying system. The idea that the encounter with the other could be an educational project,—an experiment Rousseau talks about with regard to the orangutan—expanding and deepening knowledge, is taken up in the 19th century by literary texts depicting the encounter of apes and humans in some form of imitation. More precisely: These literary texts describe the encounter from the perspective of the ape, and the cultivation of these apes as an imitation. However, cultivation is not depicted as an ideal in itself in these texts, nor is the ape shown to be capable of an enculturation not based on imitation. These texts negotiate the acquisition of culture as a process that rests on imitation, and while the question of what qualifies as ‘culture’ might vary from text to text, and is sometimes only present as a negative implication, all texts come back to imitation as the basis for enculturation.

18While literary texts of the 18th century thematized the human-ape-relation as a fear of interbreeding, the 19th century sees the rise of another theme that had been prominent on and off since the 13th century: Apes imitating humans, raising the problem of the human-animal-distinction. While the 18th century negotiated the human-ape-relationship at least in part through the topic of interbreeding—something we have to also read as a displaced discourse about slavery, miscegenation and humanity—we see that in the 19th century, this relationship surfaces in the discourse about enculturation and serves to explore the category of humanness in itself: Who is capable of being cultivated? Who is a human? Here, apes “mirroring” humans represent a textual strategy in which the ape stands in for a debate on humanness and humanity. Creating apes as beings that are cultivated through imitation, the texts challenge the idea of cultivation itself as either a form of copying or as dressage.

  • 50 E. T. A. Hoffmann: “Nachricht von einem gebildeten jungen Mann”. In: Fantasiestücke in Callots Mani (...)
  • 51 Ibid., p. 246.
  • 52 Ibid., p. 247.
  • 53 Ibid.
  • 54 Ibid., p. 248.
  • 55 Ibid., p. 249.
  • 56 See Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (footnote 29.) Paola Cavalieri / Peter Singer (eds.): The Great Ape Pro (...)
  • 57 E. T. A. Hoffmann (footnote 50), p. 250.

19In 1814, E.T.A. Hoffmann published a short narration called Nachricht von einem gebildeten jungen Mann in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung that was later integrated into his Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier50. In the narrative frame of the story, the narrator describes how he met “einen jungen Mann,” only to disclose a few lines further down “daß der seltene, junge Mann seiner Geburt und ursprünglichen Profession nach eigentlich—ein Affe ist, der im Hause des Kommerzienrats sprechen, lesen, schreiben, musizieren usw. lernte”.51 Thus, the distinction between ape and human collapses right at the beginning of this short narrative. In the eyes of the narrator, the character is first and foremost a young man, but above all, he is also an ape. And as the animal-human dichotomy collapses, another one is introduced, one that places the ape or young man in a discourse on exoticism: “[…] merkte man auch nicht das mindeste von seiner exotischen Herkunft”.52 In the letter from “Milos, eines gebildeten Affen, an seine Freundin Pipi in Nord-Amerika,”53 which is embedded in the narrative frame, Milos emphatically tells the story of how he was captured by a hunter. He muses: “Was sage ich, Gefangenschaft! Hat diese Gefangenschaft uns nicht die größte Freiheit gegeben?”54 The freedom he refers to here is the freedom to educate the mind. Then, the narration erases the distinction between imitation and originality: “Jener Nachahmungstrieb, der unserem Geschlecht eigen, und der ganz ungerechterweise von den Menschen so oft belacht wird, ist nichts weiter als der unwiderstehliche Drang, nicht sowohl Kultur zu erlangen, als die uns schon innewohnende zu zeigen. Dasselbe Prinzip ist bei den Menschen längst angenommen”.55 In linking imitation to culture, Milos takes imitation to be a primary source for the capability of original expression. In addition, Milos conquers the language barrier traditionally thought of separating humans from animals.56 In Milos’ reasoning, culture is based on imitation, while wisdom depends on the capability of language: “Wie kam mir mit de Fertigkeit des Sprechens die Weisheit!”57 While the text challenges one dichotomy, it stabilizes another: A human is a being that can use language.

  • 58 Aristoteles: Poetik. Translation, Introduction and Annotation by Olof Gigon. Stuttgart 1961, p. 26.
  • 59 Julika Griem: Monkey Business: Affen als Figuren anthropologischer und ästhetischer Reflexion 1800- (...)
  • 60 E. T. A. Hoffmann (footnote 50), p. 247: “Ich bin nämlich töricht genug, an unsere armen Verwandten (...)
  • 61 Ibid., p. 247: In the first sentence of the letter, Milos states that he remembers the miserable ti (...)
  • 62 Ibid., p. 255.
  • 63 Ibid., p. 254.
  • 64 Patrick Bridgwater argued already in 1982 that the topic of the text is not so much “der Affe als K (...)
  • 65 E. T. A. Hoffmann (footnote 50), p. 249.

20Hoffmann’s superimposition of categories brings to mind Aristotle’s notion of mimesis: “[D]as Nachahmen [ist]den Menschen von Kindheit an angeboren; darin unterscheidet sich der Mensch von anderen Lebewesen, daß er am meisten zur Nachahmung befähigt ist und Lernen sich bei ihm von Anfang an durch Nachahmung vollzieht; und außerdem freuen sich alle Menschen an den Nachahmungen”.58 Bearing in mind that imitation (Nachahmung) is the ‘basic tool’ for learning, Hoffmann’s text can be read as a sarcastic depiction of the process of education of so-called civilized and cultivated men59: Milos’ enculturation conceptualizes his transport to Europe as an epitome of an educational project based on self-disavowal. Cultivation—based on imitation – is a process of becoming an educated European, whereas his “poor relatives” remain part of “uncultivated nature”60—a nature thought of as a past overcome61: He signs his letter as “ehemals Affe, jetzt privatisierender Künstler und Gelehrter”.62 His captivity and ensuing enculturation can quite literally be read as a depiction of a process of an evolution (in pre-Darwinist terms) and a cultivation of men. Left behind in this process is the female, ape symbolized by his friend Pipi; though she has been captured too. She is not capable of cultivation, something that shall purify or clean the “Überbleibsel […] des ehemaligen rohen Zustandes”.63 Reading Hoffmann’s text as a sarcastic depiction of an individual evolutionary process (after Haeckel, we would call it ‘ontogenetic’)—an ape stemming from the bushes ends up as a cultivated artist and scholar,—we can interpret this process as a ‘personification’ of the phylogenetic process of cultivation and civilization of mankind, epitomized by Milos’ self-depiction as a scholar and artist64 and characterized further by a twofold othering of the racially coded body and the female body. An implicit connection is made in the text between the ‘imperfect’ acquisition of cultivation and civilization, non-White and women: Brought to North-America, the captured Pipi is left behind as ‘ape,’ or as being ape-like, because she is, as Milos formulates in his letter, “in der Bildung nicht so weit vorgeschritten […] als ich”.65

  • 66 Wilhelm Hauff: “Der Affe als Mensch”. In: Sämtliche Werke in drei Bänden, Bd. 2 Märchen und Novelle (...)
  • 67 Ibid., p. 154f.: As the slave says: The physician of the town expressed that the man looked slightl (...)
  • 68 Ibid., p. 155.
  • 69 Ibid.
  • 70 Ibid., p. 156.
  • 71 Ibid.

21Eleven years later, Wilhelm Hauff presents an orangutan in a similar manner in his short story Der Affe als Mensch.66 Published in 1825, it is part of a series of tales framed by a narrative in which the Scheik von Alessandria liberates his slaves, asking each of them to tell him a story in exchange. The German slave narrates a story that begins in his youth. When he was a boy of ten years, a foreigner moved into town who was judged by the townspeople as looking ‘suspicious’67. Ten years later “begab [es] sich aber, daß Leute mit fremden Tieren in die Stadt kamen”.68Part of the menagerie is an orangutan. The narrative links the foreigner to the foreign animals: Right before the animals appear, the narrator once again emphasizes that the man who moved into town ten years ago is still called “der fremde Herr,”69 because he does not participate in social events. This link solidifies when the foreigner—upon spotting the orangutan—“lachte herzlich […]; ja er gab für den Spaß ein so großes Silberstück, daß die ganze Stadt davon sprach”.70 The narrative characterizes both the orangutan and the stranger as “foreign,” as being outsiders who are not part of society, noting at the same time the foreigner’s interest in the orangutan. When the foreigner leaves town directly after the troupe moves on, the postmaster is surprised. He sees the foreigner returning at night with someone else: “[…] saß aber noch eine andere Person im Wagen, die den Hut tief ins Gesicht gedrückt, und um Mund und Ohren ein seidenes Tuch gebunden hatte”.71 Introduced by the foreigner as his nephew, everybody calls the new person the Englishman because the gatekeeper of the city claims that he heard him speaking in that language. Nobody ever sees the nephew on the street, but sometimes townspeople observe through the windows how the foreigner whips the young Englishman:

  • 72 Ibid., p. 157.

Der alte Herr entschuldigte sein Verfahren mit dem besonderen Auftrag der Eltern des Jünglings, die ihm solchen zu erziehen gegeben; er sei sonst ein kluger, anstelliger Junge, äußerte er, aber die Sprachen erlerne er sehr schwer; er wünsche so sehnlich, seinem Neffen das Deutsche recht geläufig beizubringen, um sich nachher die Freiheit zu nehmen, ihn in die Gesellschaften von Grünwiesel einzuführen, und dennoch gehe demselben diese Sprache so schwer ein, daß man oft nichts Besseres tun könne, als ihn gehörig durchzupeitschen.72

  • 73 Ibid., p. 160.
  • 74 Ibid., p. 161.

22After three months, his education, which resembles a Foucauldian dressage or disciplining, advances from learning the German language to another level: Social skills like dancing are taught and he is introduced into society. “Er bezauberte alles, er gewann alle Herzen für sich,”73 but the foreigner evaluates his nephew as “noch ein wenig roh und ungebildet; aber ich verspreche mir viel von der Gesellschaft, die wird ihn gehörig formen und bilden […]”.74 As the story progresses, the reputation of the young Englishman increases even though he has not attended schools, does not read or speak Latin or Greek, and has not learned anything besides dancing. But sometimes,

  • 75 Ibid., p. 164.

mitten in den zierlichsten Tänzen konnte es dem jungen Mann einfallen, mit einem kühnen Sprung auf die Tribüne, wo die Stadtmusikanten saßen, zu setzen, den Organisten den Contrebaß aus der Hand zu reißen […] und eine neue, auffallende Mode, wenn sie auch höchst lächerlich sein sollte, hat etwas Ansteckendes an sich für junge Leute, die noch nicht über sich selbst und die Welt nachgedacht haben […].75

  • 76 Ibid.

The young people of the town now imitate the behavior of the Englishman. They reason, “zu was hilft Gelehrsamkeit, wenn man mit Unwissenheit besser fortkömmt; sie ließen die Bücher liegen, und trieben sich überall umher auf Plätzen und Straßen”.76 They imitate the Englishman until the moment they discover that he is actually an orangutan. The whole ‘experiment’ turns out to be a joke by the foreigner, as he states in a letter to the townspeople. He is out to expose the mechanisms of a society based merely on appearances and imitation.

  • 77 Tilman Spreckelsen: “Vorübung der Freiheit”. In: Wilhelm Hauff (ed.): Die Karawane. Märchen. Berlin (...)

23In this short story, the townspeople’s perception of the nephew’s strangeness does not oscillate between man and ape, or human and animal. Instead, the townspeople interpret differences in behavior through a lens of national ascriptions: He behaves as he does because he is thought to be of English origin77. The difference between human and ape is articulated as the difference between national characters. In this way, the text defines strangeness or foreignness as animalistic, the animalistic as something foreign to the cultivated and civilized people (of Grünwiesel), and the apish animalism as something that can (to a certain extent) be cultivated.

24Just as Hoffmann’s Nachricht von einem gebildeten jungen Mann, Hauff’s story Der Affe als Mensch presents cultivation as imitation, in this case, however, as a violent dressage. And while echoing the long Western tradition of framing foreignness, race, a nd animalistic traits as interchangeable, or as standing in for one another, Hauff puts a new spin on the topic by showing how humans ‘ape’ or imitate each other. Echoing another long Western tradition, namely the depiction of apes acting as mirrors of humans, the text shows that the concept of mankind depends on certain notions of cultivation and civilization. The text also shows that not every human animal is included in the category of man: We face an inversion in the story’s two opposing ethnic dichotomies—one in the narrative frame, the German slave and the Sheik of Alexandria, and one in the story: the free citizens of Grünwiesel and the captivated and disciplined orangutan. In telling the story of Grünwiesel, the slave (as narrator) frees himself narratologically (the story originates in him), and simultaneously relegates the Sheik on the structural level of the text to the position of the orangutan or Englishman who can be educated, albeit only to a certain extent.

  • 78 Bridgwater interpretes this masquerading as thematizing the “Vorstellung, daß Erscheinungsbilder tä (...)
  • 79 The young People of Grünwiesel “kauften […] sich, obgleich sie ganz gut sahen, große Brillen, setzt (...)

25Hauff’s short story suggests on a discursive level that the capability to be cultivated is a characteristic of humanness. The text not only proposes that education is part of the process of cultivating humanity in general, a process that in Hauff’s short story resembles disciplining in the Foucauldian sense, but it also suggests that education is a masquerade78: Education is understood as disciplining via training or conditioning, as apparent in the whipping of the nephew to make him learn the language, and it is shown as a violent masking of the orangutan as human. At the same time, Hauff’s story shows humans imitating the behavior and dress code of the foreign nephew as the newest fashion. Hauff’s twist denotes all humans as animals merely dressed as humans. In that sense, cultivation is nothing more than a fashion, like the glasses everyone wears because the nephew wears them.79 In a figurative sense, the joke the foreigner plays on the townspeople exposes cultivation and education as forces that make people short-sighted; they cannot recognize what is right in front of their eyes: It is not an Englishman, it is an orangutan.

26At first glance, the text establishes the orangutan as someone who cannot partake in the project of enculturation and who is excluded from the category of mankind. But it tells a more ambivalent story. The text defines the process of education und cultivation as a form of masquerading framed as copying. Der Affe als Mensch positions the Grünwieseler’s imitation of the orangutan as a structural equivalent to the supposed imitational capacity of the great ape who is masquerading the fact that he is an ape; both—masquerade and imitation—are designed as acts of copying. We are faced here with a situation in which culture is generated through copying where no original exists: The orangutan imitates the foreigner’s notions of social and cultural behavior in Grünwiesel, and in turn, the Grünwieseler imitate the orangutan. The only one who is not part of the imitation process is the foreigner; he has the Foucauldian power to discipline the ape as well as the Grünwieseler, and initiates the circular movement of imitation.

27In presenting cultivation and education as a process of imitation in the sense of masquerading or copying, Hoffmann’s as well as Hauff’s text dispute cultivation as a process that humanizes the human animal. Hauff turns the humanizing of the ape into a project in which the seemingly cultivated citizens of Grünwiesel become the ones being ‘educated’, whereas Hoffmann’s Nachricht von einem gebildeten jungen Mann portrays Milos’ educational project as an explicit process of demarcation in which so called civilized cultures exclude the racially coded female body, here shown in the figure of Pipi, the female ape.

  • 80 Lindon Barrett: “Presence of Mind. Detection and Racialization in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’”. (...)
  • 81 For an analysis of the racial connotations of the imitation of a barber see Elise Lemire (footnote (...)

28While Hauff and Hoffmann develop a satirical perspective on enculturation as a process that defines humanness, other texts such as Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue present a different interpretation. Poe instrumentalizes the body of the ape to enter a discourse on race.80 His short story can be interpreted as a lesson in the murderous dangers of educating the ‘wrong people’, because their education or cultivation might result in a superficial, non-desirable being. The ape in this text is limited to imitating gestures (he tries to imitate a barber)81 without understanding what those gestures mean. Poe’s conclusion seems pretty clear: There are beings (people or (great) apes) that are excluded from education as part of the humanizing project.

  • 82 Franz Kafka: “Bericht für eine Akademie”. In: Ein Landarzt und andere Drucke zu Lebzeiten. Gesammel (...)

29All texts mentioned so far portray enculturation as integral to human nature. They also negotiate who participates or is eligible to participate in this project, and in this, they raise questions about the category “human” itself. In this sense, all texts can be read as precursors to Franz Kafka’s Bericht für eine Akademie,82 which is a story told by the ape Rotpeter. Here, however, the reader is no longer simply dealing with the idea that imitation is at the root of cultivation as in the texts from the 19th century. In Bericht für eine Akademie, imitation slowly shifts to mimicry, hereby questioning the idea of a culture based on imitation alone.

  • 83 Ibid., p. 243.
  • 84 Andreas Disselnkötter and Claudia Albert: “‘Grotesk und erhaben in einem Atemzug’—Kafkas Affe”. In: (...)
  • 85 Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 237.
  • 86 Michel Foucault: “Leben machen und sterben lassen. Die Geburt des Rassismus”. In: Sebastian Reinfel (...)
  • 87 Gertrud Maria Rösch (footnote 44), p. 106.

30Rotpeter’s statement, “Ich wiederhole: es verlockte mich nicht, die Menschen nachzuahmen; ich ahmte nach, weil ich einen Ausweg suchte”83 (243), marks his self-imposed cultivation or self-education as a form of self-disciplining. Read as a reflection on the classical Bildungsroman,84 the text defines self-disciplining as a survival strategy that is based on Rotpeter’s capability of being “dressurfähig”.85 This Foucauldian self-regulation as ‘Dressur,’86 however, excludes the African female body again, as did Hauff’s text87:

  • 88 Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 245.

Komme ich spät nachts von Banketten, aus wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften, aus gemütlichem Beisammensein nach Hause, erwartet mich eine kleine halbdressierte Schimpansin und ich lasse es mir nach Affenart bei ihr wohlgehen. Bei Tag will ich sie nicht sehen; sie hat nämlich den Irrsinn des verwirrten dressierten Tieres im Blick; das erkenne nur ich und kann es nicht ertragen.88

  • 89 Ibid., p. 234.
  • 90 Ibid.
  • 91 Ibid., p. 235.
  • 92 Ibid., p. 235.
  • 93 Ibid.
  • 94 Arguing that for “Red Peter, speech is spiel, a narrative that takes place within the already estab (...)
  • 95 As Gerhard Neumann and Barbara Vinken argue: “Man könnte sagen, dass der “Bericht für eine Akademie (...)
  • 96 Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 245.
  • 97 Ibid., p. 235.
  • 98 Ibid., p. 245.
  • 99 Ibid.

31Rotpeter’s statement about his relationship with the female chimpanzee betrays his constant shifting between a Freudian disavowal and an affirmation of mimicry. At the beginning of the story, Rotpeter is asked to submit to the “Akademie” his “Bericht über mein äffisches Vorleben,” but he is unable to do so because by then five years separate him from his “Affentum”.89 He describes his development as letting go of his “Ursprung,”90 and his “Erinnerungen”.91 His “vorwärts gepeitsche Entwicklung”92 obstructs his “Rückkehr”.93 This retrospective is a narrative performance94 of Rotpeter’s self-definitionone that refers to the classical narrative of a Bildungsromanin which the (apish) origin is something that is ‘lost’, cannot be remembered, and is no longer part of his own biography, development or ‘evolution’.95 He tells us he lives the way apes do (“nach Affenart”)96—but only at night. So, while Rotpeter acknowledges that he lives in an apish manner, he simultaneously disavows it and banishes his ’animalistic origin’ to the night or the dark, and proudly displays his acquired humanness in the daytime. One might argue that the enlightened (male) subject here is haunted by its negated ‘origin’—the Freudian dark continent (=woman.) But the passage defies such an analogy: At first, it seems as if the female chimpanzee is the one left behind in the “vorwärts gepeitsche […] Entwicklung,”97 because she is only “halbdressiert […]”.98 But the very next sentence changes this impression. Although it is her gaze that reveals her to be a “verwirrte[s] dressierte[s] Tier […],”99 he is the only one who can recognize it. The text creates a distance between Rotpeter and his origin, imagined as an apish African female, while also presenting them as equals: Rotpeter acknowledges and recognizes himself in her, and thus, his forward striving development or evolution becomes disorderly and confused (“verwirrt”.)

  • 100 Ibid., p. 244.

32I would like to conclude my discussion of the project of enculturation with a renewed focus on the notion of nature, as Rotpeter’s humanization is inseparably bound to his captivity. Rotpeter envisions human (German) culture on a narratological level as nature. He describes his “Menschenausweg” as follows: “Es gibt eine ausgezeichnete deutsche Redensart: sich in die Büsche schlagen, das habe ich getan, ich habe mich in die Büsche geschlagen”.100That formulation challenges the dichotomy between nature and culture, one of the founding myths for the differentiation between humans and animals, and his own cultivation as an attempt to escape. Cultivation, understood as self-disciplining and self-regulation, becomes a hiding strategy, similar to a strategy of ‘going native’, because, on a metaphorical level, civilization turns out to be identical to being ‘native’ (conceptualized as not being cultivated). This is where enculturation is no longer envisioned as an act of imitation but as mimicry: Originating from the African Gold Coast, Rotpeter moves narratively back into the bushes. In this sense, Kafka’s text completes a circle: Cultivation as a humanizing project returns to its starting point, namely the question of what is human. Reading the stories by Hoffmann, Hauff, and Kafka in a chronological order suggests that the depicted relationship between humans and apes not so much reflects shifting paradigms in natural sciences as it reflects changing ideas about cultivation and civilization. In all these texts, the human being is not presented as the crown of creation, and cultivation does not guarantee the neat separation of mankind from apes. Instead, all of this only brings us back to the place from where we started: the bushes. And when education is, metaphorically speaking, envisioned as a project of going native, as in Kafka’s text, we are being asked not only what is human, but also, inseparably, how we define cultivation, what civilization is, and to what end people are being cultivated.

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Notes

1 On the Origin of Species is Darwin’s groundbreaking work in regard to his evolutionary theory, but he actually never uses the term. See Julia Voss: Darwins Bilders. Ansichten der Evolutionstheorie 1837-1874. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 240 ff.

2 Charles Darwin: “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Part One”. In: The Works of Charles Darwin, vol. 21. Ed. by Paul H. Barrett and R. B. Freemann. London 1989, p. 160.

3 Ibid., p. 161.

4 Charles Darwin: “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Part Two”. In: The Works of Charles Darwin, vol. 22. Ed. by Paul H. Barrett and R. B. Freemann. London 1989, p. 644.

5 Charles Darwin (footnote 4), p. 644.

6 Charles Darwin (footnote 2), p. 155.

7 Ernst Haeckel: Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte. Gemeinverständliche wissen-schaftliche Vorträge über die Entwickelungslehre im Allgemeinen und diejenige von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck im Besonderen, über die Anwendung derselben auf den Ursprung des Menschen und andere damit zusammenhängende Grundfragen der Naturwissenschaft. Zweite, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Berlin 1870, p. 568.

8 Ibid., p. 571.

9 The complete title is: Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis / System der Natur für die drei Reiche der Natur, nach Klassen, Ordnungen, Gattungen und Arten, mit Eigenschaften, Unterschieden, Synonymen und Lokalitäten.

10 Londa Schiebinger: “Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural History”. In: Evelyn Fox Keller / Helen E. Longino: Feminism and Science. Oxford 1998, p. 138.

11 Ilse Jahn: Grundzüge der Biologiegeschichte. Jena 1990, p. 249. Marita Metz-Becker: “Die ‚Mammalia Linnés‘ oder das Geheimnis der weiblichen Brust”. In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich/Annette Schneider/Ute Werner (ed.): Natur-Kultur. Volkskundliche Perspektiven auf Mensch und Umwelt. Münster / New York / München / Berlin 2001, p. 260.

12 Londa Schiebinger (footnote 10), p. 143.

13 Ibid.

14 Edward L. Greene: “Linnaeus as Evolutionist”. In: Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 11 (1909, March), p. 25.

15 Donna Haraway: Primate Visions. Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. London / New York 1989, p. 9.

16 Londa Schiebinger (footnote 10), p. 144.

17 For a critical reflection on Darwin’s scientific method see Sigrid Weigel: Gena-Logik. Generation, Tradition und Evolution zwischen Kultur- und Naturwissenschaften. München 2006, p. 198. Weigel correctly points out that the morphological similarity between species is the ‘point of origin’ for the deduction of the descent. This cultural conception of biological relatedness is presented in Darwin’s writings as a natural taxonomy, i.e. a natural order of the species.

18 Charles Darwin (footnote 2), p. 151.

19 Ibid., p. 154.

20 Charles Darwin (footnote 4), p. 632.

21 Ernst Haeckel (footnote 7), p. 468.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Peter Sprengel: Darwin in der Poesie. Spuren der Evolutionslehre in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Würzburg 1998.

25 Ibid., p. 117-134.

26 Wilhelm Raabe: Die Akten des Vogelsangs. In: Wilhelm Raabe: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 19. Freiburg in Breisgau/Braunschweig 1957, p. 376.

27 Ibid.

28 See Hans-Jürgen Gerigk: Der Mensch als Affe in der deutschen, französischen, russischen, englischen und amerikanischen Literatur des 19. und 20 Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart 1989.

29 This argument is indebted to an article by Wagner-Egelhaaf, see Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf: “Vom Nachäffen. Menschen und Affen in der Literatur." In: Nestroyana. Blätter der Internationalen Nestroy-Gesellschaft 23:1-2 (2003), p. 19-34.

30 Martin Opitz: Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey. Ed. by Cornelius Sommer. Stuttgart 1991, p. 17.

31 See Olaf Breidbach: Ernst Haeckel. Bildwelten der Natur. München / Berlin / London /New York 2006.

32 Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture. New York 1994.

33 Ibid., p. 86.

34 Ibid.

35 Virginia Richter: “‘Blurred copies of himself.’ Der Affe als Grenzfigur zwischen Mensch und Tier in der europäischen Literatur seit der Frühen Neuzeit”. In: Hartmut Böhme: Topographien der Literatur. Deutsche Literatur im transnationalen Kontext. Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, p. 617. Gerhard Neumann: “Ein Bericht für eine Akademie. Erwägungen zum ‘Mimesis’-Charakter Kafkascher Texte”. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 49:1 (1975), p. 176.

36 Roland Borgards: “Affen. Von Aristoteles bis Soemmerring”. In: Günter Oesterle /Roland Borgards / Christine Holm (ed.): Monster. Zur ästhetischen Verfasstheit eines Grenzbewohners. Würzburg 2010, p. 240.

37 Albertus Magnus: De Animalibus Libri XXVI. Nach der Cölner Urschift. Ed. by Hermann Stadler. 2 vols. Münster 1916-1920.

38 Ibid., p. 1324-1329. Udo Friedrich: Menschentier und Tiermensch. Diskurse der Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung im Mittelalter. Göttingen 2009, p. 139ff. Joseph Koch: “Sie die Pygmäen Menschen? Ein Kapitel aus der philosophischen Anthropologie der mittelalterlichen Scholastik”. In: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 40, 2 (1931), p. 194-213.

39 Roland Borgards (footnote 36), p. 242.

40 For the ambivalent function of the ape as a border-figure see Virginia Richter (footnote 35), p. 604: “[A]ls Hüter der Grenze, der den Unterschied, die Bruchstelle zwischen Mensch und Tier, Kultur und Natur markiert, und zugleich als Denkfigur des Ortes, an dem dieser Unterschied verschwimmt und die Abgrenzung nicht mehr möglich ist”.

41 Roland Borgards (footnote 36), p. 247.

42 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men. Ed. by N. K. Singh. New Delhi 2006.

43 Johann Gottfried Schnabel: Insel Felsenburg. Mit Ludwig Tiecks Vorrede zur Ausgabe von 1828. Ed by Volker Meid and Ingeborg Springer-Strand. Stuttgart 2002.

44 Ibid., p. 523. Roland Borgards: “Hund, Affe, Mensch. Theriotopien bei David Lynch, Paulus Potter und Johann Gottfried Schnabel”. In: Bann der Gewalt. Studien zur Literatur- und Wissensgeschichte. Ed. by Maximilian Bergengruen and Roland Borgards. Göttingen 2009. Gertrud Maria Rösch: “Rotpeters Vorfahren. Zur Tradition und Funktion der Affendarstellung bei Johann Gottfried Schnabel, Alfred Kubin und Franz Kafka”. In: Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 126 (2007.)

45 Cornelius Pauw: Philosophische Untersuchungen über die Amerikaner, oder wichtige Beyträge zur Geschichte des menschlichen Geschlechts. Aus dem Französischen bei des Herrn von P*** [Cornelius Pauw]. Zweyter Band. Berlin 1769.

46 Ibid., p. 37f.

47 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (footnote 42), p. 324-349. For the term ‘experiment’ in this context see Roland Borgards: “Affenmenschen / Menschenaffen. Kreuzungsversuche bei Rousseau und Bretonne”. In: Michael Gamper / Martina Wernli / Jörg Zimmer (ed.): “Es ist nun einmal zum Versuch gekommen”. Experiment und Literatur I: 15801790. Göttingen 2009.

48 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (footnote 42), p. 115.

49 Ibid.

50 E. T. A. Hoffmann: “Nachricht von einem gebildeten jungen Mann”. In: Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier. Blätter aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden Enthusiasten. (E.T.A. Hoffmann: Werke, Bd. I.) Frankfurt am Main 1967.

51 Ibid., p. 246.

52 Ibid., p. 247.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid., p. 248.

55 Ibid., p. 249.

56 See Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (footnote 29.) Paola Cavalieri / Peter Singer (eds.): The Great Ape Project. Equality Beyond Humanity. New York 1993. The Great Ape Project, incidentally, proved that great apes can in fact use sign language and understand signs.

57 E. T. A. Hoffmann (footnote 50), p. 250.

58 Aristoteles: Poetik. Translation, Introduction and Annotation by Olof Gigon. Stuttgart 1961, p. 26.

59 Julika Griem: Monkey Business: Affen als Figuren anthropologischer und ästhetischer Reflexion 1800-2000. Berlin 2010, p. 59.

60 E. T. A. Hoffmann (footnote 50), p. 247: “Ich bin nämlich töricht genug, an unsere armen Verwandten zu denken, die noch in den weiteren unkultivierten Wäldern auf den Bäumen herumhüpfen”.

61 Ibid., p. 247: In the first sentence of the letter, Milos states that he remembers the miserable times in which he was not capable of giving his tender feelings for Pipi a voice through spoken language: “Mit einer Art von Entsetzen denke ich noch an die unglückselige Zeit, als ich dir, geliebte Freundin, die zärtlichsten Gesinnungen meines Herzes nicht anders, als durch unschickliche, jedem Gebildeten unverständlich Laute auszudrücken vermochte”.

62 Ibid., p. 255.

63 Ibid., p. 254.

64 Patrick Bridgwater argued already in 1982 that the topic of the text is not so much “der Affe als Künstler, als vielmehr der Künstler als Affe”. I would like to broaden his argument: The text is not only a satire on artists as apes and on aesthetic theory as it was formulated by Schiller and Kleist; it is also about understanding the cultivation of mankind as a process of ‘aping’ in the sense of imitating. See Patrick Bridgwater: “Ahnherren, oder: Der gelehrte Affe in der deutschen Dichtung”. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 56:3, 1982, p. 447-462, here p. 452.

65 E. T. A. Hoffmann (footnote 50), p. 249.

66 Wilhelm Hauff: “Der Affe als Mensch”. In: Sämtliche Werke in drei Bänden, Bd. 2 Märchen und Novellen. München 1970, p. 153-173.

67 Ibid., p. 154f.: As the slave says: The physician of the town expressed that the man looked slightly suspicious and that he was perceived as a “verdächtige Person”.

68 Ibid., p. 155.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., p. 156.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid., p. 157.

73 Ibid., p. 160.

74 Ibid., p. 161.

75 Ibid., p. 164.

76 Ibid.

77 Tilman Spreckelsen: “Vorübung der Freiheit”. In: Wilhelm Hauff (ed.): Die Karawane. Märchen. Berlin 2002, p. 514.

78 Bridgwater interpretes this masquerading as thematizing the “Vorstellung, daß Erscheinungsbilder täuschen, daß nichts für das gehalten werden sollte, was es nach außen scheint”. See Patrick Bridgwater (footnote 64), p. 455.

79 The young People of Grünwiesel “kauften […] sich, obgleich sie ganz gut sahen, große Brillen, setzten solche auf die Nase, und glaubten nun gemachte Leute zu sein; denn sie sahen ja aus, wie der berühmte Neffe”. See Wilhelm Hauff (footnote 66), p. 165.

80 Lindon Barrett: “Presence of Mind. Detection and Racialization in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’”. In: Gerald J. Kennedy / Liliane Weissberg: Romancing the Shadow. Poe and Race. New York 2001, p. 157-176; Julika Griem: “Fremde Verwandte: Affen als kulturelle Projektionsfiguren in der Literatur”. Leipziger Universitätsreden. 98 (2005), p. 77-95; Nancy Harrowitz: “Criminality and Poe’s Orangutan: The Question of Race in Detection”. In: Janet Lungstrum / Elizabeth Sauer (eds.): Agonistics. Arenas of Creative Contest. Ed. by. New York 1997, p. 177195; Elise Lemire: “‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ malgamation Discourses and the Race Riots of 1838 in Poe’s Philadelphia”. In: Romancing the Shadow. Poe and Race. In: Gerald J. Kennedy / Liliane Weissberg. New York 2001, p. 177-204; Leland S. Person: “Poe’s Philosophy of Amalgamation. Reading Racism in the Tales”. In: Gerald J. Kennedy / Liliane Weissberg (eds.): Romancing the Shadow. Poe and Race. New York 2001, p. 205-224.

81 For an analysis of the racial connotations of the imitation of a barber see Elise Lemire (footnote 80.)

82 Franz Kafka: “Bericht für eine Akademie”. In: Ein Landarzt und andere Drucke zu Lebzeiten. Gesammelte Werke in 12 Bänden. Ed. by Hans-Gerd Koch. Vol. 1. Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 234-245.

83 Ibid., p. 243.

84 Andreas Disselnkötter and Claudia Albert: “‘Grotesk und erhaben in einem Atemzug’—Kafkas Affe”. In: Euphorion. Zeitschrift für Litertaturgeschichte 96 (2002), p. 129. Gerhard Neumann (footnote 35.) Gerhard Neumann / Barbara Vinken: “Kulturelle Mimikry. Zur Affenfigur bei Flaubert und Kafka”. In: Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 126, 2007, p. 138.

85 Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 237.

86 Michel Foucault: “Leben machen und sterben lassen. Die Geburt des Rassismus”. In: Sebastian Reinfeldt / Richard Schwarz/Michel Foucault (eds.): Bio-Macht (=DISS_ Texte, Nr. 25.) Duisburg 1993², p. 34 ff. Michel Foucault: “Vorlesung vom 17. März 1976”. In: In Verteidigung der Gesellschaft. Vorlesungen am Collège de France (197576.) Frankfurt am Main 2001, p. 291 ff.

87 Gertrud Maria Rösch (footnote 44), p. 106.

88 Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 245.

89 Ibid., p. 234.

90 Ibid.

91 Ibid., p. 235.

92 Ibid., p. 235.

93 Ibid.

94 Arguing that for “Red Peter, speech is spiel, a narrative that takes place within the already established context of the spectacle," Robin Blyn reads the rhetorical performance of Rotpeter through the lense of the theory of spectacle and freak shows. Robin Blyn: “From Stage to Page: Franz Kafka, Djuna Barnes, and Modernism’s Freak Fictions”. Narrative. 8:2, 2000, p. 134-160, here: p. 142. But she misinterprets, in my opinion, the textual situation as a stage performance by a speaker. Kafka’s wording suggests, however, that while playing with the image of a stage performance, the text insists that it is a written performance told by a narrator—“der Akademie einen Bericht über mein äffisches Vorleben einzureichen” (to hand in a report.) See Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 234.

95 As Gerhard Neumann and Barbara Vinken argue: “Man könnte sagen, dass der “Bericht für eine Akademie” auf drei Fragen eine Antwort sucht, die das endende 19. Jahrhundert und noch Kafkas Zeitgenossen erregten: die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Kultur, die Frage nach der experimentellen Herstellung von Individualität in dieser; und die Frage nach der Funktion von Gedächtnis und Erinnerung, als nach der Organisation von Wissensbeständen, wie sie bei der Konstruktion von kulturellen Prozessen notwendig sind […]”. See Gerhard Neumann / Barbara Vinken (footnote 84), p. 137.

96 Franz Kafka (footnote 82), p. 245.

97 Ibid., p. 235.

98 Ibid., p. 245.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid., p. 244.

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Tanja Nusser, « Apes, Great Apes, and Mankind in 19th and early 20th Century German Literature  »Recherches germaniques [En ligne], HS 10 | 2015, mis en ligne le 05 février 2019, consulté le 03 décembre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rg/888 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/rg.888

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Tanja Nusser

DAAD Associate Professor, Graduate Director
Department of German Studies
University of Cincinnati – USA

tanja.nusser@uc.edu

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